


Like The Samwise Gamgee of Eggs

by Matrya



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Weird Comics Canon Pick-And-Choosing, post-season 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 10:22:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10092095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matrya/pseuds/Matrya
Summary: Buffy unwittingly helps Faith find out what her favorite eggs are, and other stuff.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Someone asked Jess (slutorama) on Tumblr what kind of eggs that Faith likes. I don't know how this came out of that, but it did. Somehow.
> 
> Takes place during an alternate season nine. I don't have any better details than that for you, but I promise this is not robot Buffy.

The first time Faith wakes up in Buffy’s bed, the panic carries her straight from finding her underwear to the kitchen. It would carry her all the way to the front door, but you have to go through the kitchen to get to the door and...

Well, Buffy looks up when she walks in, and Buffy is smiling. Buffy is making something at the tiny apartment stove in the tiny apartment kitchen. If Faith could calm down enough to tune in, she would hear Buffy:

“I don’t know how you like your eggs, but I finally learned how to make them over-easy without breaking the yolk.” Which is fine, because neither does Faith. Faith has only ever had hard cooked eggs from late night diner runs. They are always served with dry sausage and white toast covered in too much margarine. At her own place, she has every cold cereal from the American foods section, good enough if she says so.

Like the panic before it, the confusion carries Faith. This time, she gets from the kitchen doorway to the breakfast bar in time for Buffy to start making toast. 

“Cherry or peach?”

Faith’s eyes snap over to where Buffy is standing at the fridge, holding up two cups of yogurt.

"Oh, uhm." She stares too long at the little cups with their red smiles, long enough that she belatedly realizes she has wrapped her hands around a coffee cup. "Cherry."

While Buffy continues goes about her morning— _their morning_ —and making the whole breakfast situation happen, Faith just tries to wrap her head around the whole thing. Last night was something she had spent years thinking could never happen, and then Buffy had made a first move.

Buffy made the first move, and then Buffy made her breakfast. That would mean something, if Faith was someone else. If Buffy did that for someone like Willow, that would mean something more, but Faith knows better. Buffy kissing  _Faith_  during a post-slay apple fritter means nothing, and everything that has happened since is just…momentum or something.

It gets easier to sit there and drink her chocolate syrup laden coffee once she comes to terms with that. The toast ends up being weird until she slathers it in jam, distracting her from the weird chewiness. The runny part of the egg leaves a weird coating on her tongue, and the yogurt is too sweet, but Buffy gets her more coffee with more chocolate syrup before she has to go into work. "I know you're only around for a few days, but I just have the one shift. We can get together after?"

Faith already made herself come to terms with the fact that this is all just momentum, so she shrugs it off. "All my stuff's at Will's, so I'll just head back over there. I don't want to be in your hair."

She gets down the rest of her coffee, then avoids being alone with Buffy from the time she leaves the apartment to when she leaves the States. Better safe than sorry.

 

* * *

 

The next few times go about the same: post-slay snacks turning into post-slay sex. That leads into breakfast with weird eggs and a never-ending rotation of yogurt that Faith could take or leave. The avoidance after gets a little more streamlined, she thinks. The problem is with Faith wanting more, not Buffy looking for a good time after a rowdy night. Faith knows how to keep her issues to herself.

The fifth time Faith wakes up in Buffy's bed, Buffy is already bringing her breakfast.

When Faith gives her a look, Buffy nods at the television on her dresser. "The new season of  _Sarah Connor_  started so I've been TiVoing it. I thought we could watch last night, but we got busy with the sexiness." She smiles, though, not put out about it. "So, we can just marathon it."

"You don't have to work?" Faith feels some kind of panic set in as she grabs her tank top and pulls it on. How are they supposed to bypass an awkward goodbye if Buffy has nowhere else to be?

"I took the weekend off; thought we could hang." Buffy shrugs it off, both plates still in her hands. "The eggs are cold; I made them before you got in 'cause I figured we would need them in some capacity."

She hands over one plate and the eggs are whole cooked and cut in half, sprinkled with pepper. There are chunks of watermelon, no yogurt, and the toast is covered in the jam Faith usually puts on it. Buffy is already turning away as she puts the other plate on the night stand. "I'm getting the coffee. Can you get the TiVo to play it?"

So Faith does, fighting with Buffy's remote and eating the fruit with her fingers. She finally figures out the TiVo as Buffy walks back in with two mugs, a spoon in each. "Weird enough, that’s a fork," she corrects, handing a mug to Faith.

Faith takes it with sticky fingers and continues to ignore that it sounds like Buffy planned all this. Like everything was intentional and not just post-slay snack momentum. The eggs are weird, all smooth white and sticky-dry yolk, but the rest of it is nice enough that Faith pretends that it  _was_  intentional.

They watch all five episodes before Buffy drags her out of the bed and out to lunch. This is something Faith can do; she goes out with friends all the time, and it gives her the best chance to escape without either of them feeling awkward.

So she eats lunch and she leaves Buffy at the bus stop, then she can finally breathe.

 

* * *

 

Between visits, the contact they have tends to be stuck to chatting on Skype when both of them happen to be home. Faith hates typing, hates talking, hates having a conversation without a face. She digs not having someone see her face, but the trade-off leaves her uncomfortable with the conversations.

The seventeenth time Faith wakes up in Buffy's bed, she tumbles out to the kitchen to find Dawn and Xander already taking up the stools. Xander's eyebrows go up and Faith refuses to care. Dawn laughs, though, and that gets her hackles up. "What's so funny, Little Sis?"

"You in Buffy's froyo pajamas."

Faith looks down at herself, wearing Buffy's theme pajamas, and shrugs it off. "She took my shirt."

"Anyway, I'm making eggs," Buffy says, finally saying something, with a small edge of panic. "You're not taking off, are you?"

Immediately, Faith wonders if that was a hint to leave and hopes it was more a petition to stay. "You have my shirt, so I should probably stick around." Even if it means eggs, she still likes spending her mornings with Buffy. She has no idea if Buffy likes spending mornings with her, or if Buffy is just too polite to kick her out. Maybe Buffy is just as confused by the whole thing as Faith is.

Xander snorts. "Are you still pretending that you actually stay at Willow's when you're in town? Ow!" He glares at Dawn. "That was my foot."

"I thought you needed help, getting it out of your mouth."

Faith will never understand how the two of them happened, but she smiles tightly. They know more than she does, and she has no idea if what they know is good or bad for her. "What are you two doing?"

"We wanted to kidnap Buffy and take her to the pier, 'cause we knew she had the weekend off." Dawn shrugs. "Now we know why, so we want to kidnap both of you."

"Oh, that's cool." Faith shrugs, wishing she could shove her hands in her pockets. The pajamas have no pockets.

"You, uh." Buffy starts moving eggs to plates. "You want to go?"

Faith shrugs again, because she feels like it looks like she cares less. She  _wishes_  she cared less. "Yeah, if that's cool."

Buffy nods. "Uhm, yeah. That's cool."

From the end of the breakfast bar, Faith shrugs and feels like it might not be cool. The feeling is new and old, a reminder of where they used to be and the contrast to how she usually feels around Buffy now. When they get to be alone, anyway, and she can pretend they have something more going than momentum. Now, she feels like a dirty secret or something, which is dumb. Faith herself never ran home to tell Angel about what she and Buffy get up to together. Why would she anyway, since the two of them are just messing around and going with the momentum.

"Can you grab the bacon out of the oven?" Buffy asks from the fridge, and Faith looks over to see that the request is at  _her_.

"Uh. Yeah." She looks over at Dawn and Xander, who seem to think the request is normal enough. "We never have bacon."

Dawn cracks in, "We brought it."

Off the look Faith gives, Xander says, "Yogurt."

"Yeah, that's true," Faith says, with a smile she will never admit is fond, even as she grabs the oven mitts and opens the over door.

"You don't like yogurt?" At the fridge, Buffy is holding two cups of yogurt.

Faith shrugs and the grease in the pan sloshes a little as she sets it on top of the stove, but never goes over the side. "Yogurt's fine. Bacon's fine. Eggs look weird. It's all cool."

"The eggs look weird?" Buffy hurries over with the yogurts, looking concerned about the eggs. After looking, after Dawn and Xander lean forward to look, she looks confused. "What's weird?"

"You don't make them like that."

Dawn shakes her head. "My fault. Runny egg yolk makes me go blech so I made her go scrambled. She makes a pretty good scrambled egg, too, but never ask for an omelette."

Xander asks, "You don't like scrambled eggs?"

Faith shrugs. "Never had them before." Suddenly, everyone is looking at her like an alien. "What? I eat cereal."

"Angel never makes you eggs?" Dawn asks. "He makes great eggs."

"Why would he make me eggs?"

No one has an answer for that, so they make it through the awkward part of getting plates of food to the table. No one has ever eaten at the table, in Faith's experience, and they have to move a lot of weapons out of the way. It feels kind of nice, real, and Faith forgets to remind herself that none of this is anything she should get used to.

She wears Buffy's clothes and they go to the aquarium, then Buffy makes her sit with her for a caricature. They do the carousel at the end. All of it is the perfect kind of cheesy date day and, at the end of it all, they head to patrol. Then, Buffy pulls Faith right back into her bedroom.

 

* * *

 

The eighteenth time Faith wakes up in Buffy's bed, Buffy is propped up on one arm and staring at her, unabashed. "When's your flight out?"

"Red eye tonight. I need to head to the airport after patrol."

Buffy reaches over and grabs Faith's hand, which is rough. After yesterday, Faith already knows she needs to remember where they stand. "Is it still a patrol when we have five kids with us, scaring off all the oogly-booglies?"

Faith shrugs. "They'll get it. I still don't get the Billy thing, but the rest of them will fall into it."

"He's a good kid and he wants to help; who am I to say he can't when he sits around listening to Xander's stories?" She leans over. "But, that's hours and hours away, so what ever could we do until then?" she asks, teasing.

Faith's heart does something dumb and she has to decide whether to pull Buffy close or get space between them. Even if it damns her to hell, she decides to go with the first option, surging up as she reaches for Buffy. This does  _not_  qualify as momentum. When Buffy kisses her right back, it is more force than a reaction. Then, Buffy's slightly-too-cold fingers do what they always do, until they stop being cold at all.

 

* * *

 

The nineteenth time Faith wakes up in Buffy's bed, Buffy asks her, "So, how do you like your eggs?"

"Scrambled."

"I only have coffee yogurt."

Faith shrugs. "That's cool."

"You're not getting out of this bed until it's done, are you?" Buffy asks, leaning back over Faith.

Looking up at her, Faith grins. "Why would I do that?" she asks, grabbing Buffy around the waist. "You make the eggs, I eat them."

Rolling her eyes, Buffy leans down for a kiss before climbing over Faith and off the bed altogether. "Fine." She starts to find clothes to throw on from the mess of the floor. "But I'm going to tell everyone that you're a shockingly needy girlfriend."

"Oh." Faith's heart does a dumb thing again and after a beat, Buffy looks at her with a furrowed brow. Buffy is standing there in booty shorts and a tie-dye tank top. Buffy just called Faith a girlfriend. Her girlfriend, kind of. "That's cool," she finally says, when Buffy keeps looking at her.

Mockingly muttering 'that's cool', Buffy rolls her eyes before turning to leave the room.

Faith stares at the ceiling, reaching over to the night stand for her Blackberry. She decides not to text Willow at the last second.

Buffy said girlfriend. Faith tries to stop thinking about it, but the word volleys around in her head and makes her think dumb things. Happy things, really, which are always dumb things for Faith to think about.  _Girlfriend_  is definitely not just momentum, after all.

Girlfriend has intention. Faith hopes. Thinks, really, because Faith is definitely not dumb enough to hope for anything.

She has time to push any-and-all panic aside before Buffy calls out, "I'm eating your eggs if you don't get out here."

So Faith pulls on a tank top and some of Buffy's pajama pants, and wanders out of the bedroom. Nothing is different; it is still eggs and yogurt and toast at the breakfast bar, Buffy on the stool next to her. Her coffee has chocolate syrup in it.

Nothing is different, but Buffy called her girlfriend, and that makes all the difference.

 

* * *

 

The twentieth time she wakes up in Buffy's bed is the first time she has clean clothes. Her bag is at the end of the bed, the bag that usually stays at Willow's, and Buffy is at the dresser. "Clean clothes before noon?" Faith snorts. "You're getting fancy on me."

"I just thought…" Buffy pauses and closes the drawer before she turns to look at Faith. She looks awkward, at best, which is probably a bad thing for Faith.

It is  _never_  a good sign when you wake up in a bed and the person who owns it looks at you awkwardly. Faith knew she was being dumb with all this.

"You should keep some stuff here, and then you don't have to drag the bag back and forth. Oh, and you don't have to pay to bring the bag along." Buffy shrugs. "So, I just moved some stuff out of this drawer, in case you wanted to do that."

The panic in Faith fizzles out and she fights back a grin. "Yeah, that's cool."

Buffy mocks that again, rolling her eyes, "That's cool." She takes the step between the dresser and the end of the bed, and picks up Faith's bag before tossing it next to Faith. "Get dressed; Dawn wants to try this Russian place she found. She's obsessed with Yelp now, which has been one of those blessing/curse thingies."

Faith does get dressed and does put her other things in the drawer Buffy cleared out for her.

The Russian place is good and Dawn spends all day dragging them around the city. Then, they meet Xander for dinner after he gets out of work. Willow meets them for drinks at Buffy's after, then the group grows. First come a few Slayers, then Buffy's detective friend, then an old room mate.

Dowling calls her 'the famous Faith'. Anaheed is excited that she 'finally gets to meet The Girlfriend'. Faith has never been someone worth meeting before and it's 'a blessing/curse thingy'. Her own seventeen-year-old inner screw up wants to rise to the fore and act like being Buffy's girlfriend is nothing special. She wants to say that  people should be interested in her for herself.

Faith is smarter than that, even as she realises that no one in London would do this. Faith never told Nadira, so she could never be happy to 'finally meet The Girlfriend'. She has reasons for not telling Angel, she guesses. None of the girls would probably care, even if she said something. After all, meeting Faith's girlfriend is a lot less impressive than meeting Buffy Summers. Even these days, with all things told.

Buffy kisses Faith on the forehead in a room full of people. Just like that, all the tumult and self-deprecation seem to fade away. Like this is something they do all the time and Buffy settles onto the arm of Faith's chair.

When Buffy catches Faith staring a few minutes later, she looks self-conscious. "What?" She wipes under her lip, like she thinks she smudged her lipstick. Faith just shakes her head and forces herself not to say something that might scare Buffy away. Something like  _love_.

Buffy rolls her eyes instead. "Fine, don't tell me. That's cool."

"Isn't that my line?"

"I'm co-opting it. We'll be the too-cool-for-school couple."

Faith snorts that off. "More like too old for school, Sandy."

Someone brings up something that leads to Anaheed bringing up roller derby.

"Oh!" Buffy hops out of their private world then to join the conversation. Faith deals, because Buffy slides off the arms of the chair and sits in Faith's lap for the rest of the evening.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere along the way, Faith loses count. One day, she wakes up and has no idea if this is three dozen or forty. She knows Buffy loves her, so maybe that could be why. She knows that Angel is cool with it and this is  _not_  going to blow up in their faces.

Everything seems kind of permanent and maybe that makes all the difference, or maybe not. Maybe she just lost count.

However, the first time she wakes up in  _their_  bed is more memorable, to say the least. Buffy's crowded apartment is  _their_  crowded apartment. Mostly, the place is crowded because of her crap that still needs unpacked and to find homes. But Faith has a home.

Not that living with Angel was never home, she tells herself, but the long-distance thing has seemed harder as time has passed. London has felt more like work than anything else for months.

"Whatcha thinking?" Buffy asks, snuggling up close.

She closes her eyes and takes in a deep breath. "Dumb, sappy shit."

Exhibiting the leaps and bounds of logic Faith already fell in love with, Buffy tells her, "I love maple syrup; let's get pancakes."

Faith shakes her head. "Blini."

"Pancakes."

"Blini."

"Pancakes."

"Blini."

"Is this our life now?" Buffy wonders, then sighs deeply.

Our life, Faith thinks. She leans over enough to kiss Buffy. "Yes."

Shifting for a repeat, a deeper kiss, Buffy seems content with that. "Okay, good."

**Author's Note:**

> I used to be very good at Jossian dialogue but I've lost the knack, so I just tried to avoid needing it altogether, probably to mixed results. But I dipped my toes back into Fuffy, and that's never a bad thing.
> 
> (I know there are other ways to prepare eggs, but does Buffy seem like a poached egg girl to you?
> 
>  **Memo:** I don't check comments or kudos, but feel free to yell at me on [tumblr](http://matrya.tumblr.com) or [check out](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Matrya) my other writing!


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